Visty Banaji
Cool Learning
The road less travelled
At a time when the latest 'hot' apps and programmes are providing simplified, gamified or pre-prepared learning solutions for all of an organisation’s competency needs, what’s the alternative? Try 'Cool' Learning
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Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores…1
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hose of you who like poetry will have immediately recognised the origin of these beautiful lines. The ones who had to look at the notes to find out which poem they come from have, perhaps unknowingly, already started ingesting the soporific fare it warns against (or recommends?). Maybe, this column will be a timely alarm for them. Of course, there will be some who will neither know nor care who wrote the poem. Their minds have already 'had enough of action' (at least insofar as non-work reading is concerned) and desire rest from such 'long labour'. They are best off | March 2022
turning to less thorny columns or, better still, to binge-watching OTT serials while keeping themselves current with 110 dB TV debates and worshipping the great god WAU (Whats App University). "Surely an entire column is not going to be devoted to the benefits of poetry", I can sense some of the rugged men-of-action reading this piece fervently hoping. Their trepidation is unnecessary. I have managed to resist that temptation though I reso-
nate with Coleridge’s claim that "… poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language."2 It is left for me only to lament with Bennet: "Imaginative poetry … teaches the highest form of wisdom. … [T] here is nothing to compare with it. I say this with sad consciousness of the fact that the majority of people do not read poetry." Fear not, action heroes: we shall use a different medium to fry today’s fish.
